This post is a lot of blather about various detachable braces and my experience with them over time. No,
really, that is all it is about. If you don't have an interest in them
you can skip this and still live a full and satisfying life.
I made this valve section removable in the clever manner of my old Kalison Daryl Smith CC from back in the early 1990s. I loved that feature for several reasons, and when I first noticed the "new" King 2341 shared it I started compiling parts numbers, I took some photos, and I started scheming on how I could do this to my Holton 345.
I decided that the design of my Kurath was *much* simpler and cleaner, lending itself to this conversion pretty nicely. It also was dealing with a lot less weight, so it seemed to be safer, too. I was always worried that the very heavy 345 would snap detachable braces and I would have this dramatic scene on stage during the solo from "An American in Paris" where the valve section just fell off my horn in mid-phrase. (Ah, the imagery of that thought…)
I remembered the Daryl Smith having some rather thin, "dainty" braces that always worried me. I was told by a tech that these were a major weak point in the design and that if I did not need removable valves that I probably should have those braces replaced with heavier, fixed ones. I did not like that idea at all. (That was sometime in 1995.)
So I decided a few years ago to do this to the Kurath because one of our posters here was building a removable 5th valve for his tuba using the Conn-Selmer braces and leadpipe/5th valve three-piece "unions" that looked so nice.
I got him to give me all the part numbers and that started the whole mess. I got some in the mail and immediately disliked them because the weight of the valve section was hanging on by a ridiculously thin nub of yellow brass. The posts were big and thick and impressive, but the actual screw attachment parts were silver soldered to them via very small contact patches; *very* small. These made me nervous just looking at them.
I ended up using detachable braces from four makers on the Kurath and the Holton. Long story short, I greatly prefer the Instrument Innovations large brace sockets, but they are just too big to not look strange on the F tuba. My next choice is the brace made by Edwards. It is just like the smaller of the two from Instrument Innovations, but (unfortunately) is all brass, no nickel silver. However, the rod stock used is beefier than that used on the almost identical I.I. brace, and, importantly, the stop ring on the rod is a stronger design, IMHO.
None of the two I.I. braces or the Edwards brace have ever come loose, and none of them have ever gotten stuck so that I could not use my fingers to unscrew them.
The last maker was Yamaha. I have used several of their sousaphone braces, but all have needed to be altered to work the way I want them to. They fulfill a special need, which is to bind two tubes that are about 1/4" to 5/16" apart. NONE of the other braces can do this. They all need to be a certain minimum length, and none of them are of much use between two tubes that are close together.
Each brace used a different method to undo them. The Yamaha has a JIS Phillips head, the King uses an Allen key. The ones from Instrument Innovations and Edwards were knurled "barrel" braces for trombones — no tools needed.
After about six months of playing the Kurath with the detachable braces on it, I found a small flaw in my design. When I built the Holton out, I fixed this. The Holton is *very* well braced up, and I feel it is every bit as strong and stable as one with fixed braces.
Now I am doing a lot to the Kurath again, and it is like with a car. If you change the timing belt you usually change the water pump and thermostat, too, because of the old adage of "While you're in there you might as well do everything else…" So "while I'm in there," I have decided to work out a lot of small things. The big one (for me) is to make all seven existing breakpoints use braces that need no tools to undo. I have three connection points in the leadpipe, as well, and two are already like this, so I need to take care of the one that requires an Allen key. I am also adding a brace, and it, too, will be a trombone "thumb screw" type.
Unlike Joe, I *do* take some tools with me to gigs. I have had to repair instruments at gig sites many times over the years, and I once had a fender bender in the parking lot of a gig site that was over a hundred miles from my tools, and my first valve started hanging because the slide was bent just a bit. I could deal with the slide not working, but I could not play because of the first valve. I was parked, and the horn was out of the bag and resting on the rear seat of my car on top of the bag so that I could do some warming up away from the others. (I carry a folding chair and a stand with me everywhere.) Some damnable child piloting a large car from the early 1970s decided to do donuts in the mostly empty parking lot, and the moron clipped my car and tossed my tuba onto the floor, rendering it unplayable.
My foreman in the shop at the music store was also our 2nd oboist, and he carried a mobile repair shop in his van. Because of that, I was able to fire up an acetylene torch and unbind my 1st valve on the spot, and I was also able to repair the slide so that on stage you could not tell anything had happened. And the moron kid basically bought me another car in the process.
This experience has taught me to carry every tool needed to remove every screw on a horn, to carry replacement water key corks… even valve springs. (In 1994 I was at an MSO rehearsal and one of the steel (yes, steel) wire piston springs snapped in half on me and I lost my 3rd valve. Rehearsal happened to be on a Saturday morning, and the shop was about ten miles away, so I drove over and picked up a set of four new Allied springs and swapped the whole set out in my seat in the orchestra.
I will *always* carry certain tools with me, either in my car or in the gig bag.
So, my idea of making every breakpoint in the horn's valve section and leadpipe finger-removable started to look attractive as I was tired of having the JIS screwdriver, the Torx drive for the Minibal screws, and the Allen T wrench in my Mirapphone bags that have little to no storage space.
The Holton taught me just how short I could make the Edwards brace, and I realized the Kurath *could* have only thumb screw-type braces.
I bought four more, as well as the parts to make a fixed brace using the same parts. The MTS has a Kurath brace on the ferrules and an Edwards brace on the outer tubes, as well as an Edwards brace between the small side and the bottom bow, so I wanted the MTS brace to match.
If anyone wants to give one of these a try, here are the part numbers (and the current prices, which *will* go up every quarter)…
G-12736-0 — Brace Post Rod — $15
G-12704-0 — Threaded Flange — $5.60
G-12702-0 — Small Threaded Nut — $8.75
G-12700-0 — Stop Ring — $3.50
G-05800-0 — Brace Post — $7.75
Also, regarding the Yamaha sousaphone brace and its
JIS screw, it has the infamous dot on the head, which means is shaped to accept the tip of a Japanese Industrial Standard screwdriver. A Phillips head is designed to cam out under enough torque. The JIS does not, so if you use a Phillips head on a very tightly installed JIS screw you will strip out the cross in the screw.
I hate these. I cannot find a JIS screwdriver of the right size head and length to be of any use to me. I have a German WiHa screwdriver that fits JIS pretty well, but it is really long, so not a good gig bag choice.
Early on I decided that I would replace this screw with hex head cap bolts that use the same Allen key as the King braces. I picked up some along with the correct clearance drill bit and a through-hole tap from McMaster-Carr for cheap and set about to modify all of these braces that I have in my parts bins. I am glad I did this, too.
However, now that I am trying to remove tools from the equation this no longer works.
Back to McMaster-Carr for some searcing and clicking through all the various filters, and I found this:
The original brace was like M3.5x1 or some such, and the new hardware used 5-44 threads. This new, long, knurled thumb screw uses 8-32 threads and these braces parts are just big enough to accept both the thread size and the width of the shoulder of the screw. This brace goes between two small tubes that are very close together, so getting your fingers in there to remove it is impossible unless you have clever, little raccoon hands. And I don't.
So this screw has a 3/16" long 8-32 threaded part, with a 1" long shoulder. It is a good grade of stainless, so it should not corrode against the brass over time, unlike mild steel. It will stick out far enough with a head that is fat enough for me to install or remove without too much of a fuss.
So as far as detachable braces go, Bubba Blue said it best…
Anyway, like I was sayin', shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There's, uh, shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pan-fried, deep-fried, stir-fried, there's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That — that's about it.
) 
